Tag Archives: saved

i’ve done the crazy and been the crazy. still, to no avail, the craziest ten hours of my life revolved around a bottle of whiskey and a couch. luckily for the couch, it wasn’t just me sitting upon and furthermore the bottle of whiskey was in good company because my lips never touched it. still nonetheless, i was settled in for the ride of the circus of a lifetime. the players were characters of themselves. characters wrapped in character suits, three sizes too big and lines that read straight off the back of cue cards. the miracle of the night was the timing of every situation, lapped upon each other and my fervent sober memory cells detailing the outlines of each account in the blurriest of all detail. this was the night that a couch saved my life.
the setting was of such that no light came in or out of the gallery. the darkness dripped over ripped shards of what was once considered furniture. balancing at the perfect acute angle, my ass did not approve of such precarious destinations. i just wanted to sit down. to my dismay, i did a lot of sitting that night and thank god my lack of caring extended to my ass, because the objects of such sitting were highly questionable. even for the uncaring.
i stumbled into this darkened cave by the off-handed reference of a distant friend. the conditions under which i was invited were about as clear as the firewater everyone was coating their insides with, but alas the uncaring care little about thoughts preceding the unknown. the darker the reason, the more unclear the emotion, the safer one feels. perhaps.
the red light coated everyone’s face in a sweet menace that was potentially highly offensive but ridiculous in its unabashed care of painting all of us. many photos were taken that evening in a hopes of capturing every perfect element in all of its perfect imperfections but everyone was too wasted to care to try to focus, not blink or position the camera without any movement. any physical capture of this evening actually perfectly captured the entrails of room. wavy unfocused people moving around haphazardly. a light defining a face gripped by industrial backdrops with no hope in sight. smiles that were washed out by general fade. blurry images clearly depicting all the blurry things that crawl through the night in hopes of finding solace. it captured the blur exactly as it was.

photo by kris krug

i can’t even remember if music blared through the empty walls that were dotted with canvases of all sizes, painted entirely in black paint. the walls had more escape black holes than the inside of my head but i was not going to be the first person to point out their glaring fact. my mind was represented in this cavern and i was terrified that people would recognize it for what it was. i played it out with everyone else but all the while feeling like i was playing too close to home with a comfortable audience. the only element that played a melody in front of me was the boy with the saxophone. he had no idea how to actually play it but the prop in his hands kept him with a purpose while the rest of the room droned out the lull.
the whiskey bottle never came into my careening eye with much vigor. it always just had a place on the sidelines, silent with its watch. occasionally it got the action it was looking for and the party promptly thanked it eagerly. the mood was saturated with the dark and the liquid was not excused. everyone proceeded to approach getting hammered but ultimately there was always a plateau that was hit. once the settling in was formulated, they couldn’t get past that last hump of inebriation. they weren’t any less coherent but perhaps more honestly open and apparent than ever before. the characters in the room were finally ready to read all of their lines with the systematic gusto that each approached it with. this was not a show nor was the spectacle for me, i was merely a character myself. my only stage direction was to simply: pay attention.
once the party of the evening was officially dead, the hours seemed to approach days. this is when the couch took center stage. my cyclic existence was a gratifying one because i existed solely on this couch for hours. some of the four remaining characters would gravitate towards me for entertaining or general playing, but my main attention was the simplistic nature of the couch. it had distinguishing characteristics about that were overtly memorable. if poked and prodded, i wouldn’t have been able to tell you the make, the mode, the color or even the fabric. i don’t remember if it was scratchy or old, or brand new or soft like velvet. all i remember is that that couch saved my life.
blasted by the fact that a couch could simply save someone’s life, i’m sure, but it’s true.

photo by kris krug

not so much memory was acquired while sitting on this couch, except the fact that i was literally transformed. the circus of earlier was no longer a theatre of the absurd, it had turned into my life. i was living my life on this couch with these characters, building upon story lines with references that had never happened. i was creating dissent out of thin air and life was breathing into me with the warm, dirty breath of a full night wide awake. people started to run out of sense to make and common areas like the simple touch lost any true value. words were spoken that night that could have been looked upon as seeds of the future. but i don’t care to think that deep without the proper tools by my side. so i kept the seeds in my pocket for further inspection at a later date with more light around me.
the night soon ended in that space like the ending of time in a vacuum. there was no loud brash bravado with closing doors and girls crying. there was no off handed remarks from characters that lay in the foreground trying to score the spotlight. there was no misunderstanding. there was no hangover of the dark paintings on the wall. there really wasn’t a couch at all because once i left it and closed the door, the show was over. the play was done. the characters kept rolling their lines in such proper format that i was brutally shocked at the length.
i kept up with my part. the whiskey bottle had proven that to me. and my time spent on that couch were simply my fifteen minutes of fame. i was a star that night about to burn out but for fifteen minutes, i held on to my light. no one saw it but really that was besides the point.
in all honesty.